While exiting the presidential helicopter, Marine One, Obama thought that properly saluting the marines guarding his exit was just a bit to troublesome.

Of course, the story is more complicated that the opening sentence. The President was forced to hold absolutely nothing in his left hand while he saluted the marines with his coffee-encumbered right.

The U.S. Navy Manual (the Marine Corps is part of the Navy) has a section entitled “Procedures for Saluting.” In it, there are listed a few reasons one may not properly salute:

e. In some situations, the salute is not appropriate. In general, do not salute when:
(1) Engaged in routine work when a salute would interfere.
(2) Indoors, except when under arms.
(3) Carrying articles with both hands or being otherwise so occupied as to make saluting impractical.
(4) The rendition of the salute is obviously inappropriate, such as in places of public assemblage such as
theaters or churches, and in public conveyances.

I am not sure if perhaps the routine work of disembarking his private, high-cost, tax-payer provided helicopter counts as (1) or if perhaps Mr. President is packing heat under that jacket so that (3) applies.

(3) Would only apply if “occupied” could be replaced with “thinking about golfing.”

Where an exception could be granted would be (4) as he is exiting a method of public.. oops, never mind. This conveyance is his and his only.

The key being that if an excusable consideration had occurred Obama could have just not saluted at all. Instead, he chose to give a half-hearted, disrespectful and nearly callous version of the military courtesy.

While some excuses will be made that one or more exceptions might apply to Obama’s faux-pas (hasn’t the media excused the other bunches of them), this one should be left to dangle around his scrawny neck.

Sure, he could claim to be too busy, have too much in his hands, be otherwise engaged in other work or what have you. Our fighting men and women deserve the simple common courtesy of their commander letting them know that they are more than an afterthought – that they are worth his attention.

Can you just imaging the outrage if a marine, soldier, airmen or sailor saluted President Obama with a cup of coffee in their hands – or not at all.

Brother Rachid, the son of a Moroccan imam, has posted a video called “A Message to President Obama From a Former Muslim” in which he attempts to give the President a crash course in Islamic studies. He begins by telling the president that he is wrong when he said that ISIL speaks for no religion. The former Muslim-turned-Christian further explained that terrorism begins in the schools and Mosques and must be cut off at the root.

“I can tell you with confidence that ISIL speaks for Islam. ISIL is a Muslim organization.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxzOVSMUrGM#t=111

I have had the opportunity and pleasure to meet several former Muslims in my lifetime and they make excellent and powerful Christians. It is a sometimes dangerous conversion as Islam calls for the death of all Muslims who leave the religion. Islam calls for the conversion, subjugation, or elimination of all peoples who fall under its control. Leaving the religion to join another is simply not an option in Islam and frequently leads to the death or imprisonment of those who decide that the teachings of Muhammad are not for them.

Politicians in particular insist that this is not a war of religion or clash of civilizations. We see an endless spewing of “religion of peace” quotes, diatribes on “a nation of immigrants,” and complaints about ethnic profiling at airports. I wish that someone would tell that to the enemy, for that is exactly the war that they are waging.

Is it really helpful to attempt to portray something as something it as not? Is it helpful to attempt to fool the public into believing something that is false or misleading? Are we to believe that there is in fact no direct link between the Islamic religion and terrorist atrocities?

The adherents of militant Islam are not some small, isolated group of malcontents as they are so often portrayed. Millions of Muslims are adherents to the ideology and religious fervor that wages war on the West. The cries of jihad echo in warfare across the globe. It is the ideology of the Arab slavers waging war on Christians in Sudan. It is the call from hundreds of minarets in Saudi Arabia and the gospel of the mullahs of Iran. It is the creed of the border tribes of Pakistan and is the heart and soul of the Taliban. It flourishes in the jungles of the Philippines and the slums of Indonesia. It sallies forth from the green valleys of Lebanon and preaches its hate in the mosques of Europe. And it beheads Americans on the sands of Syria.

Whether it is the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Al-Tawhid, Abu Sayyaf, the Taliban, Al-Ansar Islam, Al-Sadr’s militia, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, Beyyiat el-Imam, Jund al-Shams, ISIL, or the dozens of other militant terrorist groups infesting the globe their methodology, goals, tactics, cruelty, tenacity, and victims are often eerily the same. It is a strange world of martyrdom, jihad, cries of Allahu Akbar! and fantasies of a heavenly reward of seventy-two virgins. They may differ by sect, creed, or nationality but each wages war on the innocent, the Christian and the Jew, the concepts of Liberty and Justice, and Western Civilization itself.

The real question is whether the West has lost its soul or is able to overcome the deplorable liberal cancer that lobotomizes otherwise intelligent people and creates an endless line of apologists, capitulators, and seditionists. If Western Civilization can wake up from its stupefying stupor of suicidal tendencies and deal with the destruction of its culture, identity, and vision then it has a fighting chance against those who believe only in conversion, subjugation, or death at the hand of the armies of Allah.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities — but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

– Winston Churchill – The River War, volume II pp. 248–50 (1899)

Never forget that many of us saw, way back on Sept. 11, 2001, that the enemy of the Americans was the same enemy that was fighting Israel, and India, and Russia, and Indonesia and the Philippines, and infiltrating Europe, and advocating in America, and throwing acid in the face of unveiled women across the world, and preaching fanaticism in Saudi Arabia, and blowing up statues in Afghanistan, and manning the madrasses in Pakistan, and pushing propaganda on al-Jazeera, and blowing up schoolchildren in Tel-Aviv, and beheading young men… – blogger D.F.V.

Bank of America reports that the United States will remain the world’s top energy producer this year and for some time to come despite the current administration’s attempts to curb energy exploration and transportation.

President Obama has done everything within his power (and some things not so within it) to suppress American energy production. As Bank of America reported, America’s energy producers have refused to give in.

U.S. production of crude oil, along with liquids separated from natural gas, surpassed all other countries this year with daily output exceeding 11 million barrels in the first quarter, the bank said in a report today. The country became the world’s largest natural gas producer in 2010. The International Energy Agency said in June that the U.S. was the biggest producer of oil and natural gas liquids.

Questionable regulations and preventing the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline have been top priorities of the Obama administration while millions of Americans struggle to put a full tank of gas in their vehicles or pay other energy bills. Thanks to American energy producers, things have been kept at least survivable. BofA’s head of commodities research said that “the shale boom is playing a key role in the U.S. recovery. If the U.S. didn’t have this energy supply, prices at the pump would be completely unaffordable.”

Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of American producers, President Obama’s failures in the middle-east are keeping gas and energy prices artificially high.

“The shale production story is bigger than Iraqi production, but it hasn’t made the impact on prices you would expect,” said Blanch. “Typically such a large energy supply growth should bring prices lower, but in fact we’re not seeing that because the whole geopolitical situation outside the U.S. is dreadful.”

One way or another, it would seem that we will see energy prices “necessarily skyrocket.”

Nothing like semantics to confuse the masses. According to reports, I.C.E. is no longer using the term “Unaccompanied Alien Children” to refer to the stream of minor illegal aliens flooding across the Southern border.

The children have commonly been referred to as “unaccompanied alien children,” or “UACs.” With the new directive, laid out in a June 4 email, both terms will be dropped and replaced with “unaccompanied children.”

How harmless and sad it seems if one were to come across an unaccompanied child. It brings images of lost children in grocery stores or kids lost in the woods. Who wouldn’t want to take them in and help them find their parents?

Americans, by and large, would like to do the same for these kids. Find their parents and send their children back to them – in the countries they came from. In fact, 2-out-of-3 Americans polled disapprove of Obama’s handling of the alien child flood.

Why take “alien” out of the classification? Will children found without adults be given the same treatment as children crossing the border without parents? Distinction and definition is important.

Had the parents applied for American citizenship and gone through the standard process, they would likely be receiving their citizenship like those in the ceremony that Obama attended today. Their children would not have had to risk their lives to go it alone.

Obama’s failure to lead on the issue is putting lives at risk and creating a national security nightmare. Simply re-classifying the problem does not make it go away.

Independence Day is for celebrating the freedoms so many have fought to defend, but today, President Obama is co-opting it to promote his own agenda.

President Barack Obama plans to highlight a positive side of the immigration debate by presiding over an Independence Day citizenship ceremony for service members who signed up to defend the U.S. even though they weren’t American citizens.

The idea of show casing the successes of legal immigrants in order to push for amnesty are hypocritical at best and political show boating at worst.

The service members receiving citizenship all went through the proper process. Legal immigration and naturalization. Obama seeks to reward millions of illegal immigrants with the same status without all the trouble of doing it right.

Disregard for the nation’s laws is and should be grounds for rejection of a request for citizenship.

Efforts on immigration reform should be centered on streamlining. Make the process faster and easier so that those that wish to legally immigrate to the United States can do so with less frustration. Allowing millions to jump ahead of those that have been lawfully following the existing process is not the answer.

COLUMBIA, SC, May 30, 2014 /Christian Newswire/ — Republican Lieutenant Governor candidate Ray Moore’s first radio ad urges primary voters to send a message to a Republican Party Establishment that he says often “sees conservatives and Christians as a bigger enemy than Democrats.”

“Our culture is decaying and our nation is crumbling. But too often the Republican Party Establishment sees conservatives and Christians as a bigger enemy than Democrats. It’s time to send them a message,” Moore says, opening the ad.

Pointing to one of Moore’s signature issues, education, Moore speaks out on the concerns parents have about Common Core.

“Our public schools have become vehicles of left-wing indoctrination and Common Core threatens to make it worse,” Moore said. “As Lieutenant Governor, I will stand up to the Obama Administration and fight Common Core.”

An announcer makes the case for Moore arguing that a conservative state like South Carolina needs conservative leaders who will fight for conservative values and “stand up for what we believe.”

The sixty-second ad notes Moore’s background as Citadel Graduate, Army Reserve Chaplin, Retired Lieutenant Colonel and Bronze Star Recipient. “Ray Moore stands for Sound Money, Sound Values and a state government that puts taxpayers first,” a nod to Moore’s support for legislation that would allow people to use gold or silver as currency to pay debts.

“Defending our values. Fighting for what is right. Standing up for what we believe,” the announcer closes the ad saying.

Moore is running in the June 10th Republican Primary. The runoff, if necessary, is June 24th. His website is www.voteraymoore.com